Gardenship, is pleased to present Women Heavy as part of our continued mission to advance the exploration of new forms and ideas in our ongoing effort to promote innovation and experimental practices in the arts.
Women Heavy is a group exhibition featuring works by artists at the forefront of their disciplines in the fields of; new media art, digital art, video art, NFTs, performance, sculpture, painting and drawing. Women Heavy reflects Gardenship’s vigiorious continued support for artists, providing facilities to create and exhibit art. Gardenship exists as a beacon of innovation, creativity and community support.
Women Heavy infuses new energies, ideas, forms and knowledge into an expanding space of potent creative potentialities. This multimedia exhibition brings together artists actively involved in cultural production, fostering the emergence of new ideas and languages. Utilizing innovative forms and technologies, this thought-provoking exhibition establishes a space for contemplation, intellectual engagement, and meditation. Set within a global relational context of art production and social praxis, Women Heavy initiates a nuanced interdisciplinary dialogue, embodying a complex networked flow of interstitial connections between artists, art works, cultural objects, ideas and communities within an expansive discourse of situated knowledge.
About The Curator:
Donna Kessinger is a contemporary artist, curator, and award-winning film director based in the New York Metropolitan area. Her work explores the genre of feminism through rich textures and the use of traditional and water-based oil paints, Liquitex spray paint, and wax mediums on linen and canvas. Kessinger’s innovative curatorial practice is driven by collaboration and partnership with artists, institutions, and art-industry leaders, all through the lens of inclusion. Known for her video art and oral herstories of turn of the century feminist including Mary Beth Edelson, Nancy Spero, Janet Henry, Carolee Schneemann and Kate Millett, Kessinger leads the charge to archive and preserve feminist history.
Her video work has been screened at the Jersey City Museum, RedSaw Gallery (Newark NJ), Benjamin J. Dineen III and Dennis C. Hull Gallery, Gardenship Drive-in, Wavelength Pandemic Projects, and venues internationally as part of ARTFEM.TV. Kessinger’s video project Les Biens, is archived at the Rhizome Artbase at the New Museum, and her REPOhistory sign design is part of the NYU Fales Library and Special Collections Archive. Following her work on REPOhistory’s, Entering Buttermilk Bottom sign project, she produced an interview with Kate Millett for DykeTV, which screened on MNN. Kessinger was part of the Project Involve for Documentary cohort, Independent Feature Project, IFP in 2003. She has worked with numerous highly regarded artists, curators, and institutions including the Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art PS1.
Kessinger has a BFA in sculpture from Kent State University and an MA in arts administration from the University of Kentucky.